C. P. E. Bach was an influential composer working at a time of transition between his father's baroque style and the classical and romantic styles that followed it. His personal approach, an expressive and often turbulent one known as empfindsamer Stil or 'sensitive style', applied the principles of rhetoric and drama to musical structures. Bach's dynamism stands in deliberate contrast to the more mannered galant style also then in vogue.[3]

To distinguish him from his brother Johann Christian, the "London Bach," who at this time was music master to the Queen of England,[4] C. P. E. Bach was known as the "Berlin Bach" during his residence in that city, and later as the "Hamburg Bach" when he succeeded Telemann as Kapellmeister there.[5] To his contemporaries, he was known simply as Emanuel.[6]

C. P. E. Bach was born on 8 March 1714 in Weimar to Johann Sebastian Bach and his first wife, Maria Barbara.[2] He was the composer's third son.[1] The composer Georg Philipp Telemann was his godfather. When he was ten years old, he entered the St. Thomas School at Leipzig,[2] where his father had become cantor in 1723.[1] He was one of four Bach children to become professional musicians; all four were trained in music almost entirely by their father. In an age of royal patronage, father and son alike knew that a university education helped prevent a professional musician from being treated as a servant. Carl, like his brothers, pursued advanced studies in jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig in 1731[2] and at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder in 1735.[1] In 1738, at the age of 24, he obtained his degree but never practiced law,[1] instead turning his attention immediately to music.[7]

Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci ("Frederick the Great's Flute Concert in Sanssouci") by Adolph von Menzel, 1852, depicts Frederick the Great playing the flute as C. P. E. Bach accompanies on the keyboard. The audience includes Bach's colleagues as well as nobles.

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A few months after graduation, Bach armed with a recommendation by the Graun brothers (Johann Gottlieb and Carl Heinrich) and Sylvius Leopold Weiss,[8] obtained an appointment at Berlin[2] in the service of Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, the future Frederick the Great. Upon Frederick's accession in 1740, Bach became a member of the royal orchestra.[1] He was by this time one of the foremost clavier players in Europe, and his compositions, which date from 1731, include about thirty sonatas and concert pieces for harpsichord and clavichord.[1] During his time there, Berlin was a rich artistic environment, where Bach mixed with many accomplished musicians, including several notable former students of his father, and important literary figures, such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, with whom the composer would become close friends.

In Berlin, Bach continued to write numerous pieces for solo keyboard, including a series of character pieces, the so-called "Berlin Portraits", including "La Caroline". His reputation was established by the two sets of sonatas which he published with dedications to Frederick the Great (1742) and to Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg (1744).[1] In 1746, he was promoted to the post of chamber musician (Kammermusikus) and served the king alongside colleagues like Carl Heinrich Graun, Johann Joachim Quantz, and Franz Benda.[1]

The composer who most influenced Bach's maturing style was unquestionably his father. He drew creative inspiration from his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann, then working in Hamburg, and from contemporaries like George Frideric Handel, Carl Heinrich Graun and Joseph Haydn. Bach's interest in all types of art led to influence from poets, playwrights and philosophers such as Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Moses Mendelssohn and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Bach's work itself influenced the work of, among others, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Felix Mendelssohn.

During his residence in Berlin, Bach composed a setting of the Magnificat (1749), in which he shows more traces than usual of his father's influence;[1] an Easter cantata (1756); several symphonies and concert works; at least three volumes of songs, including the celebrated Gellert Songs; and a few secular cantatas and other occasional pieces.[1] But his main work was concentrated on the clavier, for which he composed, at this time, nearly two hundred sonatas and other solos, including the set Mit veränderten Reprisen (With Varied Reprises, 1760–1768).[1]

While in Berlin, Bach placed himself in the forefront of European music with a treatise, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (An Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments), immediately recognised as a definitive work on keyboard technique. "Both Haydn and Beethoven swore by it."[9] By 1780, the book was in its third edition and laid the foundation for the keyboard methods of Clementi and Cramer.[1] The essay lays out the fingering for each chord and some chord sequences. Bach's techniques continue to be employed today. The first part of the Essay contains a chapter explaining the various embellishments in work of the period, e.g., trills, turns, mordents, etc. The second part presents Bach's ideas on the art of figured bass and counterpoint, where he gives preference to the contrapuntal approach to harmonization over the newer ideas of Rameau's theory of harmony and root progressions.

In 1768,[1] after protracted negotiations,[2] Bach was permitted to relinquish his position in order to succeed his godfather Telemann as director of music (Kapellmeister)[1] at Hamburg. Upon his release from service at the court he was named court composer for Frederick's sister, Princess Anna Amalia. The title was honorary, but her patronage and interest in the oratorio genre may have played a role in nurturing the ambitious choral works that followed.[10]

Bach married Johanna Maria Dannemann in 1744. Only three of their children lived to adulthood: Johann Adam (1745–89), Anna Carolina Philippina (1747–1804), and Johann Sebastian "the Younger" (1748–78). None became musicians and Johann Sebastian, a promising painter, died in his late twenties during a 1778 trip to Italy.[13] Emanuel Bach died in Hamburg on 14 December 1788.[1] He was buried in the Michaeliskirche in Hamburg.

Among Bach's most popular and frequently recorded works are his symphonies.[14] While in Berlin, he wrote several string symphonies (Wq. 173–181), most of which were later revised to add parts for wind instruments. Of these, the E minor symphony, Wq. 178, has been particularly popular.

In Hamburg, Bach wrote a major set of six string symphonies for Gottfried van Swieten, Wq. 182. These works were not published in his lifetime (van Swieten, who had commissioned them to be written in a more "difficult" style, preferred to retain them for private use),[15] but since their rediscovery, have become increasingly popular.

However, Bach's best works in the form (by his own estimation)[16] are assuredly the four Orchester-Sinfonien mit zwölf obligaten Stimmen, Wq. 183, which, as their title suggests, were written with obbligato wind parts that are integral to the texture, rather than being added on to an older string symphony. The first symphony (D major) in the set has been particularly popular, seeing a continuous performance and publication tradition all the way through the 19th century, which makes it the earliest such symphony.[16] Some of its more unusual features have been taken as characteristic of Bach's style:[17] the work, although it is in D major, begins on a D major chord, which then turns into a D dominant-seventh chord, outlining G major. In fact, there is no cadence on D major (D major is not "confirmed" as the key of the piece) until the beginning of the recapitulation, quite late in the piece.

Bach was a prolific writer of concertos, especially for keyboard. Like his father, he would often transcribe a concerto for various instruments, leading to problems determining which came first. For instance, the three cello concertos (Wq. 170–172), which are cornerstones of that instrument's repertoire, have often been considered to be transcriptions of the harpsichord versions, but recent research has suggested that they might be originally for cello.[18]

According to Bach, his finest keyboard concertos were the Sei concerti per il cembalo concertato, Wq. 43, which were written to be somewhat more appealing, and somewhat easier to play.[19] His other concertos were written for oboe, flute, and organ. Bach also wrote for more unusual combinations, including an E-flat major concerto for harpsichord and piano. Additionally, he wrote several sonatinas for one or more keyboards and orchestra.

Bach's chamber music forms something of a bridge between stereotypically Baroque and Classical forms. On the one hand, he wrote trio sonatas and solo sonatas with basso continuo (including ones for harp and viola da gamba); on the other, he wrote several accompanied sonatas for piano, violin, and cello, which are more or less early piano trios, and three very popular quartets for keyboard, flute, and viola. Bach also wrote one of the earliest pieces for solo flute, a sonata that is clearly influenced by his father's Partita in A minor for solo flute, BWV 1013.

Bach was a prolific writer of keyboard sonatas, many of which were intended for his favored instrument, the clavichord. During his lifetime, he published more collections of keyboard music than anything else, in the following collections:

Easily Bach's best-known piece is the Solfeggietto, Wq. 117/2, to the point that the introduction to The Essential C.P.E. Bach is subtitled "Beyond the Solfeggio in C Minor".[22] Several of Bach's other miscellaneous keyboard works have gained fame, including the character piece La Caroline and the Fantasia in F-sharp minor, Wq. 67. Bach's fantasias, in particular, have been considered to show him at his most characteristic: they are full of dramatic silences, harmonic surprises, and perpetually varied figuration.

Bach published three major collections of miscellaneous keyboard works during his lifetime: the Clavierstücke verschiedener Art, Wq. 112 of 1765, and the Kurze und Leichte Clavierstücke collections, Wq. 113–14 of 1766. The former includes songs, fantasias, dances, sonatas, fugues, and even a symphony and concerto for solo piano (Bach was later to publish an entire collection of keyboard versions of his symphonies).

Mechanical instruments such as the music box and musical clock were popular at the Prussian court, and C. P. E. Bach wrote thirty original compositions for these instruments, grouped together as Wq. 193.[23][24] At that time, Bach was court musician to King Frederick the Great at Potsdam; the King, who was intrigued by mechanically reproduced music, had mechanical organ clocks built for the City Castle of Potsdam and for the New Palais.[25]

Throughout his lifetime, Bach worked on the Magnificat in D, Wq. 215. J. S. Bach was alive to hear it in 1749, and C. P. E. continued to revise and perform it as late as 1786. The work clearly shows the influence of J.S. Bach's own Magnificat, including the striking resemblance of the Deposuit movements in both works.

His other important choral works include the Heilig (German Sanctus), Wq. 217, which he performed together with the Credo from his Father's Mass in B minor, the oratorios Die Israeliten in der Wüste, Wq. 238 and Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu, Wq. 240, and 21 passions.

Through the later half of the 18th century, the reputation of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach stood very high,[1] surpassing that of his father.[9] Haydn and Beethoven admired him and "avidly" collected his music.[9] Mozart said of him, "Bach is the father, we are the children."[1][28]

His work is full of invention and, most importantly, extreme unpredictability, and wide emotional range even within a single work, a style that may be categorized as empfindsamer Stil. It is no less sincere in thought than polished and felicitous in phrase.[1] His keyboard sonatas, for example, mark an important epoch in the history of musical form.[1] Lucid in style, delicate and tender in expression, they are even more notable for the freedom and variety of their structural design; they break away altogether from both the Italian and the Viennese schools, moving instead toward the cyclical and improvisatory forms that would become common several generations later.[1]

2014 marked the 300th anniversary of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's birth. All six German Bach cities—Hamburg, Potsdam, Berlin, Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, Leipzig, and Weimar—hosted concerts and other events to commemorate the anniversary.[31]